It’s on the up: a five-year look at ad spend

The MediaShop’s Tony Banahan takes a look at ad spend trends covering a five year period from March to February. While ad spend is growing, the latest data clearly indicates that the positive ad spend trend we have seen in the last couple of years is slowing down. Note that the following ad spend excludes self promotion.

Ad spend in real terms

A five-year trend shows that the total ad spend for the period March 2012 to February 2013 has increased by only 6% to R34 452 million. This is after two years of good growth (18% and 12%).

A look at the split by media type shows that television continues to grow its share – up to 47% – at the expense of Print which has shown a consistent decline over the past five years.

Radio has shown good growing to reach its highest level in five years at 15.6%.

Within television we see a continuous growth in the DStv share. This share is up to 33% from 20% compared to five years ago. This growth is mostly at the expense of SABC stations but M-Net has lost share while e.tv has remained relatively static

A look at print shows that year on year expenditure has not really declined. Rather print growth has been at a lower level than other media, which manifests itself in reduced share. Within print daily newspapers have the lion’s share at 38% but it must be remembered that from a revenue point of view there are five or even six issues a week compared to the other titles being either weekly or monthly.